PRIVACY POLICY

We are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and we strictly adhere to the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

Our Privacy Policy, together with our terms and conditions, set out how we collect personal information from you, or how you provide us with personal information, which will be processed by us.

How we collect and use the information we receive from you

When you place an order and create an account with us on our website, we will ask you to provide certain personal information about you consisting of:

your name; and

your email address.

Please note that we require this information to be able to process and fulfil your order.

If you purchase services, our third party payment provider may require additional personal information in order to process such payment (e.g. your home address). Please note that this information is not collected or stored by us. The relevant third party payment provider should set out the terms on which they are collecting such data at the time you make the payment.

By submitting this information via our website, this is considered your consent for us to use your personal information in accordance with our privacy policy (which maybe amended from time to time).

Your personal information will then be used by us (including our: employees; agents; subcontractors; members of our group; resellers; and awarding or accrediting organisations) to provide you with the services you ordered and from time to time to communicate with you on any matter relating to the provision of the services.

Please note that we and our resellers and relevant awarding or accrediting organisations may also use the information you provide to us for the following purposes:

to monitor website usage and provide statistics to third parties for the purposes of improving and developing our website and the services we provide via our website. Please note that any such statistics and/or information provided to third parties will be made on a confidential basis and will not include information that can be used to identify any individual;

to support, improve and develop our business in general;

to contact you for your views on our website, our services and our business in general; and/or

to provide you with updates to our services, any special or new services, developments to our website or any policies (including our Privacy Policy) displayed on our website, and any other matter we think may be of interest to you.

If you would prefer not to receive any of the above-mentioned information (or if you only want to receive certain information) from us please let us know by either sending an email to learnersupport@virtual-college.co.uk, or calling us on 01943 605976.

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes.

[We will not share, sell or distribute any of the information you provide to us without your prior consent, unless required to do so by law.]

How safe is your information?

Protecting your security and privacy is extremely important to us and we make every effort to secure your information and maintain your confidentiality in accordance with the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998. Our website is protected by various levels of security technology, which are designed to protect your information from any unauthorised or unlawful access, processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

Please note that we may need to disclose your personal information where we:

are under a legal duty to comply with any legal obligation or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions; or

need to disclose it to protect our rights, property or safety of our customers or others, including the exchange of information with other companies, organisations and/or governmental bodies for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

How you can register

You are able to browse our website without registering with us. Please note however that you will not be able to order or access any of the online learning courses and materials unless you register with us.

Registration must be completed as part of placing your first order with us. We will only ask for your debit/credit card details when you place an order for services via our website.

For the purposes of registration, we will ask you to enter your name, address and other personal details. The registration process will take a few minutes and it will create a personal account for you. As indicated above, all information or account details that you provide to us will be securely protected.

Once you have registered, each time you visit our website, you will need to input your email address and chosen password to identify yourself to us. Once you have identified yourself, you will be able to access your user and account details.

Our use of cookies

A cookie is a small piece of information which is automatically created by our website on your computer. Please note that cookies are harmless to your computer. Cookies are a useful way of remembering the choices you have previously made while visiting our website. We use cookies to:

We will take your continued use of our website as your consent to our use of cookies as described in this document.

If you don't want us to use cookies when you use our website, you can adjust your internet browser settings not to accept cookies. Your web browser's help function should tell you how to do this. Alternatively, you can find information about how to do this for all the commonly used internet browsers on the website: www.aboutcookies.org. This website will also explain how you can delete cookies which are already stored on your device.

Please note that if you set your computer to not accept cookies, there may be certain features/areas on our website that you may not be able to use. It may be necessary to have cookies enabled in order to purchase or access online courses and materials.

Our website currently uses the following cookies:

Name

Description

__utma

Analytics cookie used to determine unique visitors to the site and it is updated with each page view. Expires after 2 years.

__utmb

Analytics cookie used to establish and continue a user session throughout the site. Expires after 30 minutes from setup.

__utmv

Analytics cookie used to create a custom user segment within the site. Expires after 2 years.

ASP.NET_SessionId

ASP.Net generated cookie created when a user views the site. Expires after 2 years.

Promote_Basket

Cookie used to store users basket information to aid in the online sales procedure. Expires after 30 days.

General

If any of the information you provide to us changes, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can make the necessary changes to the information we hold for you on our database so that your records are accurate and up to date. If you wish to make any changes to your information, please contact us by emailing Learnersupport@virtual-college.co.uk or calling us on 01943 605976.

If you wish to see the information we hold on you, please let us know by emailing us on learnersupport@virtual-college.co.uk or calling us on 01943 605976. Please note that we are entitled to charge an administration fee of £10.00 to meet the cost of providing this information to you. We will respond to your request within 40 days of the date we received your request.

Our website may contain links to other websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. This privacy policy applies solely to information collected on our website.

Please note that we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any changes, these will be shown on our website and will immediately supersede any previously posted information.